When most people think of U.S. foreign policy, they picture the president. The president, to be sure, is the nation's chief executive and its chief foreign policy architect. But he is not the only one calling the shots, and his power has limits.
Consider what U.S. presidents can and cannot do. They can deploy the U.S. military around the world but cannot declare war — that power rests with Congress. They can enter into executive agreements with other countries but not treaties, which require Senate approval. They can establish ties with a foreign government but cannot send a dime's worth of aid without Congressional appropriation.
Presidents often find their powers tested after they enter office. During his first term in office, then-President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change and a nuclear deal with Iran, but his campaign pledge to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons program and end "endless wars" in the Middle East remained unfulfilled. President Joe Biden's administration then rejoined the Paris agreement and pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, but he failed to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
"There are limits to what a president can do and that is because of the number of actors that are involved and the number of checks and balances that do exist," said David McKean, former director of policy planning for the State Department and staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who served as ambassador to Luxemburg.
Historically, foreign policy was the president's domain, with significant Congressional input, according to Thomas Schwartz, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at Vanderbilt University. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the State Department was small, and the executive bureaucracy limited.
As the U.S. grew in power in the 20th century, so did its foreign policymaking apparatus.
"Today's foreign policy machinery is enormous, committed to billions of dollars and thousands of persons involved, in the military, political, economic arms of the United States," Schwartz told VOA. "The one thing that probably is consistent is that the role of the president ... is now much more in the forefront."
A model of the U.S. foreign policymaking process, developed by the late political scientist Roger Hilsman, includes three circles:
- The inner circle: The president and his close advisers, including his national security adviser who usually heads National Security Council meetings
- The middle circle: Key executive branch departments and agencies – the departments of State and Defense, the military's high command, the intelligence community
- The outer circle: Congress and a variety of other actors, including interest groups, corporations, think tanks, foreign governments – all vying for influence
"There is no doubt that the institutional architecture of foreign policy has gotten much, much bigger," McKean said.
For example, the State Department, a small agency with 700 employees in the 1930s, has expanded to a 70,000-strong bureaucracy, McKean noted.
The NSC
The NSC is the nerve center of the foreign policymaking machinery. Created in 1947, the office, located next door to the White House, has expanded in size and scope. Its principal members include the president, the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense and other top officials. McKean calls this the "president's own foreign policy team."
The national security adviser's influence has changed from administration to administration. However, the adviser, McKean said, has the ear of the president while the secretary of State is often traveling."
When a crisis erupts, such as the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the NSC swings into action. To help the president decide on a course of action, the national security adviser calls an emergency "principals meeting," while NSC staff put together options for discussion.
"When you're dealing with an immediate crisis like Assad, you've got no time, you've got negative time," said Gordon Adams, an emeritus professor of international relations at American University who served on the NSC in the 1990s. "Cars have to pick up principles and whisk them to the White House, and those meetings start at any hour of the day or night and happen with great urgency."
Congress
With the president in charge of foreign policy, a change in administration can result in significant policy shifts. But often there is more continuity than change.
That is because the president is not the only actor shaping foreign policy. As a co-equal branch of government, Congress plays an important role. Though not given a specific role in foreign affairs, Congress can provide oversight of policy decisions and pass legislation to shape policy.
Most importantly, Congress controls the budget, Adams said. This means it can influence how much money is spent on foreign aid, military operations and other international initiatives. For example, President-elect Trump has promised a mass deportation of undocumented migrants, but he'll need congressional funding to make it happen.
"Congress is going to have a voice in what the legislative term language is around that process and around the money that is actually appropriated for that process," Adams said.
Other actors
As the foreign policy machinery has grown over the years, so too has the influence of outside actors. These include corporations, interest groups, think tanks, foreign governments, the media and the public.
"That is also an area where I think there's been a huge increase in influence so that corporations increasingly play a big role in foreign policy because so much of what goes on in terms of trade involves multinational corporations," McKean said.
Foreign allies can also influence U.S. foreign policy, though this varies from issue to issue and administration to administration, Adams said. He noted that in the 1990s, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded a reluctant President Bill Clinton to intervene in the Balkans.
With so many actors involved in the U.S. foreign policymaking process, the system can seem bewildering to policymakers in other Western democracies, Adams said.
"They don't have this kind of sloppy all-over-the-place set of display of interests and the ambitions and agendas that we have in the American policy process," Adams said. "So in a way, we have one of the least efficient policy processes of Western democracies."
